ABSTRACT
Jean-Luc Godard's provocative comments provide a suitable entry point into this essay's investigation into the relationship between film and history. Marc Ferro's Cinema et Histoire played a pivotal role in this belated disciplinary shift; it constituted the first synergetic attempt to reflect and critique the cinema from the point of view of history. Ferro believed the task was to compare history to the imaginary that it helps create; to carry out textual analysis without losing the focus on the historical context. In the 1990s the question of the "representability" of history became more pressing, particularly in relation to the cinema. As the new century dawned, 11 September 2001 changed all the cards on the table. The tragedy of the Twin Towers and the television images and videos uninterruptedly reproducing this nightmare drove history into daily life. According to Jean Baudrillard, 9/11 represented the fight of globalisation against itself and inaugurated a fourth world war.
